Creators are Underpriced

Devin blew my mind and sent me down a wild rabbit hole

If you live in the tech world, you’ve probably seen the Devin demo.

Devin is the first capable AI Software Agent, built by Cognition Labs (you can see their founder at 12 years old bodying a math competition here).

When I say capable, I mean that (per the demo) Devin can build, deploy, and repair software bugs on its own.

Many are referencing the Devin launch as the ChatGPT moment for agents…the first example of a fully functional, end-to-end AI.

Another popular metaphor being used is Roger Bannister and the 4-minute mile.

Before Roger, no one had ever broken 4 minutes for the mile. In that era, people assumed it was a physical impossibility.

Then, Roger said hold my beer and ran a 3:59:40.

Just 2 months later, an Australian bloke named John Landy did it as well.

The general theory is that as soon as one person/company proves something is possible, the rest of the world remaps how they think about the problem.

I believe Devin will inspire the next wave of capable AI agents in all categories, ushering in a new class of productivity.

And this is where my thought spiral started…

Let’s fast forward 3-5 years (or maybe sooner).

We’re going to have agents for everything. Coding, design, copywriting, sales, video editing, legal, tax, bookkeeping, etc.

Anything that can be done on the internet, will be done by a specialized AI agent.

Each of these agents will be available via a subscription fee and turned on in just a few clicks.

A good proxy for this is how Stripe instantly enables anyone to accept payments online or how Shopify created a 10-minute workflow for building an e-commerce storefront.

They took a closed door (payments, ecomm) and gave everyone the garage code.

Now take that framework and apply it to everything.

Agents will enable entrepreneurs to launch companies with zero employees and limited capital. Entrepreneurs will become head of the command center, controlling dozens to hundreds of agents simultaneously.

So what happens next…

For one…I don’t think everyone will lose their jobs. This tends to be the gut defensive reaction from most people I talk to about this*

But it does mean that the moat shifts from “technical skills” to “brand, taste, trust, and distribution.”

If there are 500 companies that build a new version of Slack, which one will win?

• When technical ability is commoditized; taste, brand, and distribution become the differentiators

• When technical ability and brand are commoditized; taste and distribution become the differentiators

• When technical ability, brand, and taste are commoditized; distribution becomes the differentiator

In a world of millions of capable products, whoever can get in front of the buyer wins. This is where trust meets distribution.

And creators are trust at scale.

Owned distribution, with max trust, becomes the most valuable thing in a world of infinite brands.

And I’m not saying this to talk my own book because I’m a “creator”…I believe content as we currently think of it will also cease to exist.

If there are 1M creators today, there will be 1B in 3 years, 999M based around synthetic personalities with completely AI driven workflows.

Maybe these will be so good, and so indistinguishable from human accounts, that the sheer volume will overwhelm buyers and people will just buy from whatever they see.

But my gut tells me this isn’t how things will play out.

I think there will be some forced differentiation between AI generated and human generated.

The same way people buy organic food today will be how they look at content (human vs robot).

If it plays out this way, then human creators, with trust at scale, will be the most valuable piece of the company stack.

*Oh and btw, when this happens, I think the bottom 30% of performers will lose their jobs (forced to reskill), but the top 70% will get 5-100x more productive and the world will just progress faster. It’s not that companies will lay everyone off, it’s that they’ll just do 5x as much and grow 5x faster. The value will accrue to companies max leveraging this (tech companies). NFA.

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